Hackensack, N.J.: Small, Ethnically Diverse and Affordable

Hackensack, N.J., could not have been farther off the radar screen when Bibi Masara and her two teenagers began looking to move from the Bronx. Ms. Masara, 41, who works for a venture capital firm in Midtown Manhattan, wanted a slower pace and initially considered Westchester County. But her research into home prices pointed her to New Jersey.

Last spring she closed on a three-bedroom, two-bath colonial near a nature preserve in the leafy Fairmount section of Hackensack. “For what I paid, $399,000, you couldn’t get a house in Westchester,” Ms. …read more